Lost Horse Press and the Sandpoint Library are pleased to announce a Workshop, Reading, and Book Signing featuring Claire Davis and Shann Ray on 26 July 2014. The workshop will take place in Sandpoint Library’s Rude Girls Room between 1 pm and 4 pm. The Reading and Book Signing will take place at 4 :30 pm. Admission to the Workshop & Reading is free, but writers must register for the workshop prior to 10 July by contacting Lost Horse Press at 208.255.4410 or email losthorsepress@mindspring.com. The public is invited to attend the Reading & Book Signing even if they do not attend the Workshop.

Workshop Theme

Writing from Mystery: The Inner Life of Characters in Poetry/Fiction: A generative class featuring both poetry and fiction in which students will create pieces and a lively discussion.

The Writers

CLAIRE DAVIS’ stories and novels have received numerous awards and earned her the honor of being The Oregonian Book Club’s featured author. Her hard-biting prose and unwavering honesty make her fiction and nonfiction capture what it means to be human. Claire Davis’ first novel Winter Range was listed among the best books of 2000 by the Washington Post, Chicago Sun Times, Denver Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian and The Christian Science Monitor, and was the first book to receive both the PNBA and MPBA awards for best fiction. Her second novel Season of the Snake, and her short story collection Labors of the Heart were both released to wide critical acclaim. She is co-editor of the anthology Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-five Women over Forty. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines such as The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Short Stories. She lives in Lewiston, Idaho where she teaches creative writing at Lewis-Clark State College. She also teaches for Pacific University Low-Residency MFA in Writing Program.

SHANN RAY has served as a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, a research psychologist for the Centers for Disease Control, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Division, and a visiting scholar in the Netherlands, the Philippines, Canada, South Africa, and Colombia. His collection of stories, American Masculine, named by Esquire for their Three Books Every Man Should Read series and selected by Kirkus Reviews as a Best Book, won the Bakeless Prize, the High Plains Book Award, and the American Book Award. Sherman Alexie said Ray’s work is “tough and beautiful” and Dave Eggers called it “lyrical, prophetic, and brutal, yet ultimately hopeful.” Shann’s creative nonfiction book of leadership and political theory, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity, sheds light on the nature of categorical human transgressions and engages the question of ultimate forgiveness in the context of ultimate violence. He is the winner of the Subterrain Poetry Prize, the Crab Creek Review Fiction Award, the Poetry Quarterly Poetry Prize, the Pacific Northwest Inlander Short Story Award and the Ruminate Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in some of the nation’s leading literary venues including Poetry, McSweeney‘s, Narrative, and Northwest Review. Shann’s debut book of poems, Balefire, was released in Spring 2014 by Lost Horse Press. Shann lives with his wife and three daughters, in Spokane, Washington where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University.